In December, Embark Studios shadowdropped The Finals, a high-octane, destructive first-person shooter with some hero elements worked in. It pulled in a substantial audience overnight, reaching a peak player count of a quarter of a million users on Steam alone. This free-to-play shooter was regarded as a ‘major franchise pillar’ for Nexon, the game’s publisher and great expectations rose following a successful launch window.
However, in the most recent financial update from Nexon, it was confirmed numerous times that The Finals isn’t hitting expected targets and that work is underway to find out why that is.
Not Hitting The Mark
In the financial letter published recently by Nexon, it was revealed:
The launch of Season 2 in March created a short-lived increase in player metrics but delivered lower-than-expected retention and revenue. The Embark team is working with our Korea-based Live Operations team to understand and address the key issues.
Elsewhere, Nexon admitted that the solid results of other titles in its portfolio were ‘partially offset’ by The Finals’ shortfall. Ultimately, The Final’s failure to deliver on expectations meant that the publisher reported lower revenue than it was originally targeting, despite reporting growth in MapleStory and rampant success from DAVE THE DIVER.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Nexon’s report confirmed that The Finals pushed consolidated MAUs up on a year-over-year basis. The free-to-play nature of the game was always bound to attract a vast audience, and even the teething issues caused by rampant cheating weren’t enough to keep away a core following.
That’s not the end of the story, though. Nexon expects growth for The Finals, particularly with the game’s third season dropping in June.
For more Insider Gaming, read about the launch details for Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut and subscribe to the Insider Gaming Newsletter to keep up to date with all things gaming.
They’re spread a little thin. Finals should have gotten more of a push and DNF should be put to sleep. Invest money in a new DFO anime instead.
More game modes, more weapons,…
less $ invested in the skins more into making this game fun should be the right thing to do, Nexon 🙂
+1, attract a massive audience and watch how well battle pass sales do. You can still put out some skins, but don’t flood us with a bunch that are really just really small variations of other existing skins. It cheapens the game’s image.
The game has solid fundamentals but it’s plagued by cheaters and the default ranked mode is not fun. There is way too much incentive to third party and chase kills rather than do objective.
Coz they too busy nerfing stuff instead of keeping things how they were in the beta. Everything was powerful and then the masses started complaining there was never any winning to the balance. Game should have remained close beta forever tbh
They make some of the most fun games I’ve ever played but they have 0 concept of what retains players and attracts new ones. Add it to the dead game list in nexons graveyard.
The Finals went down the dreaded follow what the kiddie console community was bitching about. NERF NERF NERF always the same issue gets the game in trouble.
Devs, they eat boogers OK. 1 shot 1 kill with stable weapons and the COD/BO hardcore folks will come
This game is really fun and addicting. I do think the cheating aspect put a lot of players off. Some balance changes probably affected some abandoning their presets. The Finals has great potential to grow and become more successful.
Because it’s boring and generic it’s yet another hacker infested FPS with worse destruction than battlefield and full of micro transactions not to mention poorly balanced
Maybe if they decided to fix the voice communications on xbox more than a thousand reviews would go from 1 to a 4 real quick, still sitting in silence 5 months later.